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John Elway had his full NFL experience with the Denver Broncos, which lasted 16 seasons. The retired Broncos quarterback recently revealed that football was not his only option when choosing a sport to go pro.
In the NFL Hall of Famer’s documentary, Elway, which is now streaming on Netflix, he shared that he was once drafted by the New York Yankees but something was holding him back.
“I wanted to play football. The quarterback gets to touch the ball every down, and you’re in control of a lot of different things,” Elway said. “I love playing baseball, but I was an outfielder, so it wasn’t quite as exciting as the quarterback position. If I couldn’t get out of [being drafted by] Baltimore, I was going to go play baseball for a year. You never know — if I’d had a good year in baseball, would I have stayed in baseball? I think ultimately my big goal was to play football.”
Sports were a large part of Elway’s life as he shared that his father was a football coach as well as sharing that he had a love for basketball which he shared was his “first love.”
“I always thought I was going to be the next Jerry West because it was my favorite sport at that point in time,” Elway explained before sharing that an injury stopped his hoop dreams.
“I hurt my knee junior year in the Christmas tournament and missed a couple of months; then my senior year in football, I tore my knee up and had surgery, so I couldn’t play baseball or basketball,” he added. “So, basketball kind of eliminated itself. But when I first started, it was actually my favorite sport.”
Despite not playing in the MLB or pursuing basketball, Elway made a name for himself in Denver. During Elway’s last two years in the league leading them to back-to-back Super Bowl wins in 1998 and 1999. He was later inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 2004.
The post Did you know John Elway was drafted by Yankees? Broncos legend reveals Baltimore factor that kept him out of baseball appeared first on ClutchPoints.
